Police Minister Backs Proposed 13th Amendment

There’s a new constitutional amendment on the table and it’s got people talking. Critics, from the National Trade Union Congress to the opposition and defense attorneys, are sounding the alarm. They say it could lower the bar for declaring a state of emergency and open the door to government overreach. But Minister of Home Affairs Kareem Musa is pushing back. He says the Thirteenth Amendment isn’t introducing anything new, it’s simply giving constitutional backing to a law that’s already on the books. In fact, he points out, the language comes straight from a 1993 law passed by the United Democratic Party. So why the outrage now? Musa argues that critics may be forgetting their own history.

 

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs

“As you know this is now going to be the thirteenth amendment to our constitution, which obviously is a very limited amount of constitutional amendments that have been made since our independence. What we have to understand is that whenever you are making and amendment to the constitution, whether for better, or in some cases, you might consider it to be worst, there will be criticism from various entities, especially the opposition. But if you ask me, fisherman will never say their fish stink, because when you look at the state of emergency that came under scrutiny in the high court, that was a state of emergency that was instated by the UDP. So now we are having to defend that. But then you see the opposition condemning the SOE and criticizing this legislation, but what we have to understand is that this legislation is in large part, if not wholly a migration of an existing law. So if you look to the 1993 passage of the legislation in the crime control and criminal justice act, it is the exact language that you see in there that is now being migrated into the constitution. So this is a law by the United Democratic Party. I don’t think they realize that, that this is their legislation. So it is just giving it that extra protection cloak by enshrining it in the constitution, which will make it less open to being attacked constitution, because it now forms part of the constitution.”

 

Does embedding this law in the Constitution protect public safety, or does it make it harder to challenge in court if it’s ever misused?